Experience of child participation from the community approach in the context of a pandemic

Abstract

DDuring the year 2021, within the framework of University Extension Grants, we carried out the project titled “Strategies for a community approach to the psychosocial effects of the pandemic on children in a rural context”, in coordination with the Soup kitchen and Popular Library “Caritas Felices” from Ampliación Los Troncos neighbourhood, Monte Cristo, a city located 25 kms away from Córdoba city. Framed within the rights approach and the Community Social Psychology paradigm, we worked on the co-construction of a meeting place with children between 5 and 11 years old. Therefore, the working methodology was the Participatory and Participant Action Research. This methodology, in its ethical-political dimension, promotes the active participation of a community for the transformation of their most felt needs. In the second year of a global pandemic, our goal was to strengthen the community approach strategies to deal with the psychosocial effects of the COVID-19 on children from rural contexts. By doing so, we would recover the political capacity of participation, promoting child protagonism, which facilitates the elaboration of their process of subjectivation and the processing of adverse situations.